On Spring Street in Lower Manhattan, tourists slide in line for a “cronut.” A group of 20-somethings play pickleball on a court nearby. Along the sidewalk, couples stroll hand in hand, squinting in the sun on an abnormally warm winter morning.
Out and about, too, are thousands of creators on the hunt for content. One team in particular, however, takes the (wedding) cake for most likely to capture your heart.
Jeremy Bernstein, Victor Lee and Aaron Feinberg run Meet Cutes NYC, which publishes microportraits of modern love on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Each video begins with Mr. Bernstein asking, “Excuse me, are you two a couple?” as the team approaches a pair of unsuspecting sweethearts with their camera. “Would you mind telling me the story of how you first met?”
The romantic tales that follow offer a glimpse into love’s funny, and sometimes unpredictable, way of playing out: blind dates, first sights, second chances, airplanes, arranged marriages, May-Decembers, baseball games, book clubs, punk shows, past lives, summer nights, summer camps, sign language, funerals, dorm rooms, discos, dating apps, DMs, carwashes, karaoke, subways, sunsets, butterflies, pizzas, ice cream.
The trio of 29-year-olds were not always romanticists, nor were they very active on social media. That changed when Mr. Lee and Mr. Feinberg, who met as children in Port Washington, N.Y., linked up with Mr. Bernstein, a friend from Mr. Feinberg’s childhood on the Upper West Side. Mr. Lee — who had the initial idea — was inspired by couples from his own life as well as his appreciation of man-on-the-street interviews.
In February 2023, they shared their first video, and now, a year later, they have 3.7 million followers — including Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Garner and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — across platforms, with viewers from countries as far as Nepal, Saudi Arabia and Australia.
On a recent Saturday morning, I joined Meet Cutes NYC as they interviewed couples on the street. We met at Ground Support, a cafe in SoHo, and after introductions, the trio set up on the sidewalk outside. “We like couples with coffee,” Mr. Bernstein said. “They’re more likely to say yes.”
I had been warned to expect a lot of noes over the course of the session (and that it could be tricky at times to tell if two people were actually together). But the first three couples to pass by agreed to do the interview. “That’s not how it usually goes,” said Mr. Bernstein, who now considers talking to random people second nature. He had spent the last four years selling renewable energy on the street behind a folding table.
In the project’s initial months, the three friends often dashed out of work during lunch breaks and on weekends to film videos. “We got a tip that we should post once a day” to maximize online engagement, Mr. Feinberg said, “so we tried to stick to that.”
Eventually, Mr. Lee and Mr. Bernstein transitioned to full-time content creation for Meet Cutes NYC. These days, they film about five times per week, sometimes as a trio, sometimes as a pair. And sometimes it’s just Mr. Bernstein, who has earned a bit of a reputation as the sole voice heard behind the camera. Passing by the group, a woman shouted: “Your voice is iconic!” Mr. Feinberg turned to me, smiling, and said, “He actually won ‘most distinctive voice’ in his high school yearbook.”
In each video, Mr. Bernstein tends to stick to a set of questions: How did you first meet? What’s your favorite thing about your partner? What’s the secret to X years together? Before settling on these, Mr. Feinberg said, they tried several different constellations of questions: “We even used to ask people’s star signs!”
That day in SoHo, Mr. Feinberg stopped midsentence several times, his eyes fixated on a potential couple, often across the street. “Funky hair” or “cool outfit,” he would say before dashing in between cars idling at a stoplight and calling out for Mr. Bernstein to meet him down the block. (“We always say we’re going to get hit by a car one day,” Mr. Lee said, laughing.)
Even after hours of interviews, only a few clips from each session are deemed fit for posting, Mr. Feinberg said. The natural hubbub of city streets — such as an ambulance’s sudden blaring siren — can instantly render an entire interview useless. “You become pretty sensitive to noise doing this job,” Mr. Lee said, as a saxophone wailed across the street.
The trio films a majority of their videos in Manhattan or Brooklyn, though in November, they traveled together to the United Kingdom. “Londoners were much harder to stop,” Mr. Lee said. “So many couples had met in a pub that we had to make a compilation of them.” They have also filmed in Spain in October and South Florida in December, and hope to make trips to other countries with many English speakers like India, Ghana and Singapore.
Once shooting is complete, each team member independently sifts through the past week’s recordings (a Google Drive holds over 1,000 interviews) and then they meet on Zoom to present their favorites. If at least two of them agree to feature a certain couple, the final version is scheduled for posting.
The three work cohesively as a team, though Mr. Feinberg admits that there is a fourth, unofficial member who plays a role, too. “My mom gives me daily updates on what’s happening in the comments,” he said, smiling and showing a series of paragraph-long texts.
While they are grateful for all of the positive feedback they receive from viewers, a few responses, in particular, have emphasized how the impact of their work can transcend the online world into the real one. “One time,” Mr. Feinberg said, “a woman messaged us and explained that through watching our videos, she realized that she was in an abusive relationship and that what was happening wasn’t the norm.”
To end the day, I asked the guys, who all have romantic partners, if hearing stories about couples of all ages and in all stages has translated to any changes in their own relationships.
Mr. Lee, who has been with his partner for five years, said that the most useful advice often doesn’t focus on how to find love, but how to keep it. “It’s easy to fall into a routine and just sit on the couch,” he said. “So it’s important to never stop dating your partner.”
“There’s not one direct line to love,” Mr. Feinberg added. “Everyone needs something different from their partner.” And Mr. Bernstein echoed the sentiment: “We’ve seen open arrangements, long-distance relationships and everything in between.”
“In other words, there’s no one way a relationship should look,” he said. As one watches the spectrum of stories on Meet Cutes NYC, it’s quite obvious that this, like love, is true.